My paintings are decaying narratives influenced by B-movie posters and film stills. In the way that a film still or a Pulp Fiction poster may function, my narratives don’t reveal the entire story, but they capture the entirety of the emotion and mood. Horror as a genre has cultivated tropes designed by men, built around women. As a Latina woman, I focus on navigating the reclamation of the horror genre. My work examines the experiences of women through a horror lens. I am exploring trauma as well as the spectacle and objectification of the female body. Two female archetypes continually speak to one another in my work: the damsel in distress and femme fatale. In my work I try to raise questions about sexuality, fear, and the perception of female bodies.

Artist Bio: Aryanah Rivera is a Buffalo born feminist artist. She is a recent graduate of SUNY Purchase’s BFA Painting and Drawing program. Her Senior Thesis, Miedo is an ongoing body of work about female fear and the female figure in the horror genre. Her vivid, visceral paintings are derivative of 1950’s-70’s pulp-fiction novel covers and cult classic horror films. Rivera’s work balances the grotesque and the enticing in texture, color, and content.